Business organizations have historically generated an enormous quantity of physical records (also referred to herein as “non-digital assets”). Physical records include paper documents, files, and records, and also include non-paper items such as boxes, hardware prototypes, video tapes, compact disks, digital versatile disks, and other types of physical items. These items are typically archived in file rooms, warehouses, or other types of storage locations.
Because many business organizations are subject to various legal, industry standard, and regulatory record-keeping requirements, many organizations utilize a document management system to keep track of the location of their non-digital assets. Document management systems typically maintain an inventory of the non-digital assets and their physical location. Other functions, such as checking a non-digital asset in or out, may also be performed by the document management system.
Since the start of the modern computing era, business organizations have also been generating copious numbers of digital assets. Digital assets may include any type of digital information, such as digital documents, images, electronic mail messages, and others. The legal, industry standard, and regulatory record-keeping requirements also apply to an organization's digital assets. Accordingly, many organizations utilize a digital records management solution to manage the utilization, destruction, and archival of digital assets.
Today's document and digital records management solutions suffer from several serious drawbacks. In particular, none of today's solutions offer a unified system to manage both digital and non-digital assets. As a result, many organizations have systems in place for managing non-digital assets that are completely separate from their digital records management solutions. This results in extra expense necessary to maintain and utilize two different asset management systems. Moreover, because the two systems are completely separate, it is difficult to enforce policies (i.e. a retention policy) on related digital and non-digital assets.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.